


Desperado

by jackmarlowe



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Depression, Drugs, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M, Original Character(s), Parenthood, References to Suicide, post-politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-25 16:18:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackmarlowe/pseuds/jackmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some months after Malcolm Tucker and Jamie Macdonald resume an uneasy post-political partnership, Malcolm ends up in a Glasgow hospital on Jamie's daughter's birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Writing post-political stuff with Malcolm and Jamie was never really my intention - they're not suited for it - so really this verges on speculative less funny original stuff. Still, it came along, I went with it, and you'll still get a Proper Story update soon so just fucking enjoy/cope.
> 
> Jen Macdonald and her sister Martha, who does not appear in this story, are bits of shared headcanon with theohgodblog.

  
_and don't your feet get cold in the winter time?_   
_the sky won't snow, the sun won't shine_   
_it's hard to tell the nighttime from the day_   


 

On the morning of Jen’s sixteenth birthday, Jamie finds Malcolm on the tiled floor of the loo pale and quite still, eyes half-open and fixed with vague disgust on a pool of his own vomit. The first doctor sees far too much Ambien and Restoril in Malcolm’s sluggish pulse and Jamie babbling about insomnia; a psychiatric institution is recommended gently, for later; curtains snap shut on Malcolm, head lolling, his gaze wandering unfocused after Jamie, and they’re told politely to fuck off for a bit.

Martha’s at her mum’s for the weekend – for the first time since the divorce, Jamie thinks, this is an actual fucking blessing. It’s very abruptly just him and Jen, his beautiful selkie-haired quiet bespectacled fucking brilliant too-tall mystery of an oldest daughter who sits with her arms locked ‘round her narrow knees in the passenger’s seat and glares at the Glasgow grey day. She’s wearing her favourite purple and orange striped jumper, Jamie notices after about five anxious sideways glances. Because it’s her fucking _birthday_. Jen’s often totally fucking beyond his comprehension, a deep-space Moons of Fucking Iego angel alien even to the Planet Teenager, but Jesus, sometimes she’s still just his wee girl who wants to grow up to be Hermione Granger and she’s not hard to read at all. She’s his girl, and she just wanted her fucking birthday, and fucking _Malcolm_ – Malcolm, who knew what day it was – has gone and made Jamie want to kill him, provided he doesn’t fucking die of his own accord first. _Christ_.

He pulls off a chip shop near the Clyde on blind panic-instinct. It’s a shit chip shop really – Jamie studies the peeling plastic sign and the telltale empty carpark but for an old woman walking a half-rat dog. The car goes off and takes the temperature with it in about thirty seconds flat, this being Glasgow in November.

Jen hunches her shoulders and seems to curl into herself, cat-like.

‘Has he tried to kill himself, Da?’

Jamie looks over at her, meets her quiet green stare, and nearly has his heart Truly Fucking Broken for the third time in his life.

‘I dunno, sweetheart. I really dunno what he’s done.’ Malcolm’s never trusted the Best Policy Is Honesty approach with the kids, but Jen is sixteen – practically a grown-up, Jamie’d say if she were anyone else and not his occasionally petulant daughter who still writes stories about unicorns (she hides them under her jewellery box; Malcolm recently found a very good one, solemnly replaced it, and told Jamie once he was confident she’d moved them).

She’s trying to keep her cool journalist kind of voice on, the one she gets from Malcolm, as she stares down her nose at the dash. ‘He didn’t say anything weird t’you last night?’

‘No.’

‘He seemed fine to me. Really fine.’

‘I know.’ Jamie swallows – four times, he got up last night to go the toilet after tossing around in bed, and he hadn’t said a fucking word. ‘I know he did.'

‘He said he was going to make me breakfast.’

Her voice wobbles and in an instant Jamie’s twisted in his seat to wrap his arms around his good girl who looks just like her fucking mother when she’s trying not to cry and sets her jaw just like Malcolm when she’s trying to be brave and can turn him homicidal in a fucking second with this suggestion that Malcolm’s hurt her, only then he has to remember where Malcolm is. Jamie rests his chin on her curls and rubs her back briskly and tells her it’ll be all right, he’ll be fucking all right, they just need a bit of time to sort things out and it was probably a fucking accident anyway.

They get out of the car, Jamie with every mad intention of buying Jen a birthday lunch of all the fried haddock she can fucking eat, only to find that the chip shop is closed. Jamie has a brief mental episode kicking the door, which makes Jen go frigid and silent, then steps away to pant and swing his arms helplessly. Jen folds her arms across her chest and watches him, cold breeze tugging at her mad dark hair, weight even in her scuffed black Converse.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ she suggests shortly.

‘Oh Christ, Jenny, it’s your fucking _birthday_ -’ Something large and fish-hook-shaped snatches at his throat now, and he’s not going to fucking _cry_ …

‘Aye, an’ I want to go for a walk.’ She presses her full lips together and tilts her chin. ‘C’mon, Da. Please. You cannae cry on my fucking birthday. It’s no’ cool.'

It’s down to the river, then, Jen wearing Malcolm’s grey fleece from the back seat over her birthday jumper. She’s so fucking _tall_ – the top of her head’s level with Jamie’s ears, which makes him feel about six hundred, and on the concrete steps leading down to the bank she’s occasionally higher than him when she lets him step first. Martha’s like Jamie, the wean, scrappy and small, but Jen’s growing up into a proper fucking model – he’d remarked this last time he saw her dress up nicely, and Malcolm had said _Or the best-looking director of the BBC by several hundred miles, if they’re not careful_ , which had made Jen smirk. She still walks like a kid, though, flinging her arms out, trotting down to the wee beach knock-kneed and gangly, pausing a little ahead of him to roll up the bottoms of her jeans and turn rapt attention to a flock of brown seagulls fighting over an empty Haribo wrapper.

‘Your present hasnae come in the post yet,’ Jamie informs her as they go along. This feels normal – he somehow feels less to blame for this, given the circumstances.

‘That’s okay.’

‘Does it feel different, being sixteen?’

She stuffs her hands in the pockets of the fleece and does an adolescent shrug. ‘I dunno. A bit. I feel a lot older than Martha than I did before.’

‘Well, she’s catching up to you – thirteen in two months, Jesus. She’ll probably celebrate by setting fire to the house. Set a good example, okay?’

‘Da.’ Jen stops short and looks up at him, squinting a little in the weak cloud-sun; Jamie pauses obediently. ‘You know that mate of Malcolm’s in London, the _Guardian_ reporter with the ginger beard, who I did that internship with last summer?’

‘Aye.’

‘He told me Malcolm had a history of depression – tha’s true, isn’t it?’

Jamie closes his hand around his phone (a downgrade from the government Blackberry; one of those Star Trek communicator types that beep when you flip them shut, which if he’s honest he much prefers) in his pocket and briefly considers calling in a fucking Pompeii on the hack in question’s house, which is on the nicer end of Marylebone Road. He breathes and does a little turn in the wet sand. ‘Tha’s exactly none of his _fucking_ business.'

Jen nods impatiently. ‘I tol’ him that. But he does, doesn’t he? You cannae do his job and not be depressed or mental or something.’

‘Did that soon-to-be-post-mortem _Guardian_ Weasley say all this?

‘Yes, but I’m not _stupid_ , Da, I grew up with the two of you – he wishes he knew half of what I do.’ She flicks a grim half-smile, and every work-related expletive Jamie regrets uttering in front of her before she reached the tender age of ten flashes in neon letters before his eyes. ‘But that’s right, isn’t it? He’s depressed?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Jamie turns abruptly to look out over the slate grey slapping water, running a hard hand through his tangled hair. He tries to take a calming breath, which works about as well as it usually does. ‘It’s – very fucking complicated, okay? I’m no’ trying to be-’ A quick mental flick through their last proper shout as he fiddles with the buttons of his anorak ‘- _condescending_ , or whatever you think I am, honestly. He’s having a hard time adjusting. We all have, haven’ we. You can’t do a job like that for as long as he has and not come off the rails a bit, and knock over everyone else around you on the way – it’s no’ a nice clean stop like one of those proper high-speed trains.’

‘So he did try to kill himself, then.’

‘Jen – I’m no’ lying, I dunno. He might’ve done. He hasn’t been fucking sleeping.’

Jen pushes out her jaw again in a way that reminds Malcolm, though he’s never said to either of them, most of her father. ‘He’s got it easier than you did,’ she says flatly.

Jamie glances up sharp from his shoes and looks away as soon as she fixes him with a proper challenging stare. ‘No, he doesn’t. You trust me on this – it’s not the same thing at all. I wanted to get out.’

She snorts angrily through this last very possibly false statement. ‘He’s got us. You didn’t have him, and you needed him more, and if he thinks he’s _allowed_ – I love him too, Da, but Malcolm’s a proper fucking coward sometimes. I won’t have him taking you for granted again.’

They so rarely talk about this – it’s delicate, strange territory, and treading it now makes Jen seem even more dangerously adultish and foreign than ever. Malcolm has technically been part of the kids’ lives for over a decade – never legally, of course, nor will he fucking ever be, but financially first, then as a friend all the way up to what he is now, which objectively speaking is something like Full-Fledged Stepdad. Martha and Jen have always been content with this; they rarely ask questions about Jamie’s relationship with Malcolm, either out of the fucking creepy pagan sixth sense inherited by all Macdonald children or just total lack of concern. Assuming both and fearing anything approaching The Talk, Jamie’s never really pushed the issue.

He has a quick glance towards the bridge for Inner Strength and makes himself meet her gaze, his tall fierce sixteen-year-old with her nose dripping slightly and a defiant pink coming to her cheeks trying her level best to be unreadable and unfuckable, part Tucker.

‘That’s all done with, now.’

‘Da-’

‘I know,’ Jamie says gently, and shakes his head once. ‘I know, I know and I know you know. You’re far too smart and fucking _sensible_ for me, di'you know that? You’ve got your mum and the auld fucker rolled into one – you could win the election in an afternoon with tha' psycho brain.’

She quirks a thin eyebrow.

‘But we’re here now, either way. I know it hasn’t been alright – it hasnae been fair on you, or your sister-’

‘-or you.’

Jamie bites his tongue. ‘Maybe, aye, okay, maybe. But we’re a family again, and right now he’s no’ well. It’s not fair but that’s how it is.’

Jen hesitates. Jamie notices she’s shivering despite Malcolm’s too-big fleece with its sleeves tucked in to cover her hands: he moves in a step, raising an inquiring arm, and after a moment’s pause she darts in to his side and lets herself be folded into a big warm hug like a bairn. Jamie’s stomach twists in on itself once, twice, and settles briefly in the space between them.

‘He’ll be alright,’ he mumbles again, mindlessly, like his own genius sensible child hasn’t just told him off in specific and accurate terms. ‘I am going to fucking _kill_ him, but I’ll get him to make your breakfast first. I promise. It’ll be alright.’

‘No.’ Jen turns her head against his chest. ‘We’ll all be alright, this time.’


	2. Chapter 2

  
_desperado, why don't you come to your senses?_   
_you been out ridin' fences for so long now._   
_oh, you're a hard one, but I know that you've got your reasons_   
_these things that are pleasin' you can hurt you somehow_   


Every year, they watch Jen’s current favourite film on her birthday. Given that last year was fucking _2001: A Space_ _Odyssey_ , Jamie’s pretty certain it hasn’t been _Mulan_ since she was about six, but tonight she wants to watch _Mulan_ and at this point Jamie is too tired and mindlessly obedient and anxious to say anything different.

Anyway, he fucking loves _Mulan_ , and has long since forgotten the brief period he spent resisting it after Malcolm told him off for not providing the girls with better female role models. Jen has not forgotten, but doesn’t say so for all ninety-odd minutes.

They sit in the dim living room of the little flat that’s been home for nearly four years, now, two bedrooms and a kitchen disproportionately sized to Jamie’s desperate feral culinary attempts. Jen rests her feet in Jamie’s lap and hugs the tartan blanket close under her chin, brow furrowed, little smiles (despite herself) sudden and reassuring. She and Martha used to belt ‘I’ll Make A Man Out Of You’ in the car; now that scene’s almost comically silent on the couch, and makes Jamie want a whisky very badly.

Jen claims she’ll never have a drink. Jamie, vaguely horrified, offered her a beer over dinner (spag bol, his only guaranteed success) just to be sure; she’s sure, and Macdonald-stubborn. This, at least, is so familiar and comfortable he doesn’t press the issue.

They watch the late-news afterwards, Jamie noting with half a brain the names that’ll matter next week – he still does this, like clockwork, making him think it wasn’t just good instincts but also bad and stubborn breeding that kept him in politics for so long.

Malcolm fidgets through the news, now. Jen pays rapt attention, drinks it fucking down in a way that suggests they properly overdosed her as a child and she’s now a Lost Cause, but tonight she’s drifting and Jamie finds himself glancing over and wishing her present had come, that he had something to fucking give her other than war in the Middle East and the SNP.

He gets up after a while and bends down to scoop her up to carry upstairs like a bairn, his tall sixteen-year-old, but she rouses herself and draws away from him, murmuring drowsily.

‘I’ll walk, I’ll walk, s’alright…’

Jamie stands back and shifts on his feet, meeting her green eyes as she stands. He suddenly doubts whether or not he could’ve carried her at all.

‘Okay. G’night, sweetheart.’

‘You’ll wake me up, if anything happens with-?’

‘Aye, 'course, ‘course.’ She doesn’t move; Jamie leans forward awkwardly and kisses her on the forehead, and she nods and folds her arms across her narrow chest and backs away like she’s grown a year for every hour. He considers _happy birthday_ , briefly, but then she’s turned to go upstairs and he finds himself slumped back down on the couch with News 24 flickering away.

One o’clock comes around. Jamie finds himself on his fourth beer. _Insomnia_ , not that he’s ever fucking had it – that’s the word he said this morning, _insomnia_ , _insomnia_ , like he was so fucking clever.

Like he knows what that looks like in Malcolm – and he does, red eyes, blue veins standing out on his wrists, three-day stubble, bared teeth after gulps of coffee. Insomnia in Malcolm is sharp and ugly and natural as pissing. This was something else. Insomnia in the Malcolm he knows – that’s on account of the whips’ numbers, someone extra stepping out of a ministerial car, the PM’s wife’s best friend’s drunk-texts. This is familiar; this is part of what makes him whole; but Jamie’s remembering, and knows it even in his daze, something from years ago rather than recalling the present.

His phone rings abruptly, jerking him upright on the couch.

The nurse tells him they’ve alerted the police and they’re very fucking sorry, but Malcolm’s been gone at least an hour now. He took his shoes and left without checking himself out, not, she hastens to add far, far too fucking self-righteously, that he would’ve been allowed anyway, that the psychologist hadn’t had time to make the assessment. Jamie barely makes it out of the house to yell.

She beats a hasty fucking fat-turtle-to-shell retreat, and Christ, there he is standing on his own front stoop panting steam over the echoing car park, and all he can think about is Jen upstairs and whether or not she’s sleeping. She stays up far too late and pays for it in the mornings – Malcolm says it’s a teenager thing, not to worry – but it’s been such a long, long, long _fucking_ day, maybe, maybe…

It’s proper fucking Scott of the Antarctic out and he’s wearing a T-shirt and threadbare jeans from an unmentionable decade. Shuddering, Jamie shuffles numbly in, glancing through the kitchen towards the lights on the road half-expecting police red and blue.

They’ll take him back to the hospital, if they find him soon. When they fucking find him. If they find him at all.

Some years ago, he realises, biting his tongue bloody with the rising urge to goalkeeper-kick both his and Jen’s abandoned hot chocolate mugs from the coffee table, he would in this expanding gap between phone call and now have shoved shoes on and bolted mad out the door, but his instincts still slam behind his shoulders at the notion of leaving one of the kids home alone and Malcolm – _Malcolm_ – can walk where he fucking likes, if he thinks he’s got a fucking place to go.

Jamie flicks off the light, heart pounding in his ears, and resumes his uneasy cross-legged perch on the couch. He finishes his beer despite nausea creeping into the old spaces and whispers a fierce senseless mantra to himself in the dark against the news: _fall asleep and you’ll have bad fucking dreams._

It’s three o’clock and someone’s gently slipping his glasses from his nose. Jamie’s immediately disoriented because he hasn’t dreamed at all, just dozed with ‘A Girl Worth Fighting For’ drifting in and out of his head on a badly tuned loop - he jumps, batting at the hand.

Malcolm makes a soft impatient whishting noise in the dark.

‘Oh – oh, you _fucking_ – you deranged, bollockless _fucking nut-_ ’

‘Shut it, eh, you’re going to wake her up.’

Jamie gulps a breath and puts his hands up blindly, squinting to see; weight shifts the couch, Malcolm’s face comes in like a sharp skull, and Jamie jumps worse as thin icy hands take his and guide them back down. Another blink, and Jen is there, over his shoulder, out of bed curled up fast asleep in the armchair with her purple duvet.

He hitches a breath and is briefly quiet. Malcolm keeps a tight, frozen grip on his hands, and watches him glaring with an unreadable, narrow expression. His grey-tipped hair is soaking, as is his jumper, currently dripping cold pinpricks into Jamie’s lap with their proximity.

‘Jesus Christ – what is this, the fucking Great Yeti Escape?'

‘You didn’t think I’d need my fucking wallet, did you – had to walk.’ His voice is low and gravelly and sounds like he’s been gargling with glass shards; Jamie feels a cold dry touch against his neck, tentative. ‘I’m fine now.’

He sits bolt-still, resisting the impulse to shove him away; his stomach nearly falls out the back of him when Malcolm wraps his other arm around his neck and hugs him grimly tight, face to the crook of Jamie’s neck. He’s shivering hard: despite the ball of outrage knotting to a spark in his stomach, Jamie’s most primal instincts are still closely tied to the preservation of Malcolm Tucker and so compel him to gather him up. He rubs Malcolm’s tense back and spins silently through a litany of death-threats as his eyes adjust to the gloom.

‘I’m sorry, Jamie.’

Jamie takes a slow breath and swallows. ‘You’re going – to have to be fucking specific, there.’

Malcolm sighs a little and rearranges himself, pulling away. There’s a small crunching sound as he does – he runs a quick distracted hand through his hair and examines the small plastic box that appears to have fallen between them. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, you’ve gone and crushed it-’

‘What’s that?’

‘A fucking – birthday cake. For Jen.’

‘ _Wha-_?’

‘Stole it from Marks and Spencer,’ Malcolm mutters, deadpan; Jamie blinks and realises he’s serious.

He very suddenly can’t fucking stand this and gets up, none-too-gently jams his blanket ‘round Malcolm’s shoulders without looking at him, and stalks silently into the dark kitchen to put the kettle on. There’s a long period filled by the entire litany of water boiling under sped-up electric heat (hissing, surging, bubbling, and that final torrent of grumbles accompanied by the mental illusion of a rising whistle) in which Jamie stands still with both hands pushing against the counter, gaze fixed on the dank yellow streetlight shadows and mind somewhere halfway up the volcanic fucking slope of Mount Doom.

Somehow Jamie’s made tea; he turns, two mugs in hand, and his first thought is Jen asleep – silent Catgirl behaviour, creeping down like that. He wonders suddenly if she heard the phone go.

Malcolm has lain down like a bairn beneath the blanket, legs curled up with filthy shoes still on and fists clutching the tartan wool close to his face. He’s a groggy mess; suddenly Jamie can see the aftereffects of the drugs in him and shoves him off when he tries, in the rare near-asleep way he has when he actively wants to be touched, to drop his head into Jamie’s lap as he sits back down on the couch.

‘Sit up.’

‘You’re going to _wake her up_ …’

‘I hope she fucking does,’ Jamie hisses softly, ‘and gives you a proper bollocking before I inevitably move to disembowel you and leave you hanging from our very smart Disney-themed shower curtain by your own fucking entrails. Drink your tea, twat.’

He does, grudgingly, sitting up with some difficulty beneath the tangled blanket and curling shuddering around the warm mug. Jamie arranges himself on the other end of the couch with his knees to his chest and watches him gulp, burn his tongue, wince, and glare.

‘Why’d you do a Steve McQueen, then?’

Malcolm glances over at him, unhealthy pale gaze almost over-bright in the dim living room. ‘Maybe I felt better.’

‘Aye, an’ you don’t have a fucking PA checking you out and doing the paperwork anymore. Just me.’ Jamie sets his mug down carefully on Martha’s latest _National Geographic_ , leaning forward to ensure he keeps his voice down. ‘I’m no’ being part of that headline – _Former Government Communications Director Freezes His Bollocks For Science After Melodramatic Suicide Attempt, Lover Drowns Self In The Fucking Clyde_ – get to _fuck_ , if you think-'

‘Oh, Jesus Christ, I _wasnae_ -’ He flicks briefly to Jen, then back, struggling to stand and get up and away; Jamie lunges forward, grabs his tottering mug of tea with one hand and his wrist with the other, and keeps him trapped there. Malcolm looks like he might be contemplating resistance for approximately four seconds, and then Jamie twists ‘til his wrist bones start creaking and he stops, scrubbing angrily at his still-soaked head with his blanket.

‘Go on!’

‘You really think – you _really fucking think_ if I was trying to kill myself, you pointless Byronic _fuck_ , I wouldn’t have managed it?’

‘No,’ Jamie retorts hotly, ‘ten years in government and Kirsty Fucking Feng Shui Wark reckons you were pretty fucking inept, so I wouldn’t put it past you.’

This is the point where there’s usually violence of some kind, with them. In the past, this kind of violence was a guaranteed precursor to furious/deeply therapeutic, as Jamie would once sum it up to be slapped over the head with a copy of the Spending Review, sex; now that seems comically distant, with a sixteen-year-old asleep on the chair opposite and years of dead ground perched between them on Jamie’s less than tasteful couch. The thought of this releases Jamie’s grip like he’s been burned. Malcolm retreats into himself and stares boring holes into his tea, doing this Distant Depression thing he’s acquired in their time apart that makes him barely fucking recognisable to Jamie.

Jen rolls over a little, making a soft murmuring sound. Both sets of eyes on the couch move to her and settle there, after they determine with unintentional parental simultaneity that she’s still asleep.

Malcolm coughs and ducks his head. ‘Did she still have a birthday, then?’

‘’Course. ‘Course she fucking did. We do know how to manage without you, by now.’

He winces like he’s got something stuck in his throat and coughs again. ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ he says after a moment, low and ragged, and gives Jamie a quiet Look. 'You know. I'd rather you didn't. I wanted-'

He pauses like he wants Jamie to fill that up - Jamie stays resolutely fucking grave-silent, and Malcolm grimaces and stretches the blanket between his hands, baring his teeth a little in a way that says he's struggling to put words in order.

'I am trying my absolute fucking best,' he says finally. 'And I've built up a fair bit of stamina, as you know very fucking well, not in _that_ sense, but. I keep - I'm running out of breath halfway through. I've been hit by the fucking Emphysema People's Car doing a hundred fucking miles an hour on the fascist Audobon, and my head's been left spinning under the fucking BMWs. I'm _trying_.' He pauses, breathing out through his half-open mouth, and adds quietly, 'I couldn't sleep, Jamie. I just couldn't fucking sleep.'

Jamie's heart's hammering indignant at being ignored in his ribs, whamming up into his throat. 'You should've stayed in hospital. You need a fucking shrink, I cannae - I can't have this, Malc, with the kids, no' on Jen's birthday-'

'I wouldn't. You know I wouldn't, I _won't fucking go_ -'

'I know, but you could've, acting like that. We're no' getting any younger, you're no' fucking immortal-'

Malcolm slides him a sidelong glance, the first time he's looked at him since this little admission, and swallows. 'Well,' he says, and there's an odd little coyness there that makes Jamie pause. 'Not anymore, but that counts for something.'

'Oh - you stupid, _stupid_ , complacent, Munich fucking Air Disaster _cunt_ ,' Jamie growls, part-exasperate, part-near-pissing himself with relief because that's Malcolm, there, suddenly, right there under the frost and ruined jumper and the desolate fucking husk, and he's trembling with fury and horror still but that's also it, right there, feeling overblast-electric despite incessant battering. For perhaps the fourth time in their entire long while it's Malcolm who's the first to pull him in and hold him tight and quiet, pushing their heads together and stubbornly saying nothing despite the tugging current between them, holding the fuck on. Malcolm's skin still feels chapped and cold, but they stay there long enough that his shivering slows past hypothermia and Jamie only has room to want sleep and a warm bed.

Jen wakes up a little while later - it's her father mumbling or Malcolm getting up to put a box in the refrigerator - and without rising from her catlike curl in the armchair calls Malcolm a name that shocks and impresses even Jamie. She's barely awake, though and lets Malcolm, with some difficulty, pick her up and carry her up the stairs, Jamie trailing just behind. He leaves them at Jen's room, helpfully closing the door behind them as an unsubtle hint, and crawls into his own bed.

Malcolm comes in a while later, taking his time with his rain-soaked laces and moving wearily out of his clothes. Jamie watches him dimly.

'Are you making her her pancakes, then?'

'No.' Malcolm shrugs on a sweatshirt and slides into bed. There's a brief moment of space between them, but then he rolls over to face Jamie and Jamie puts an arm around his waist, palm against his back. Malcolm closes his eyes. 'She doesn't wan' them. She wants me to go back to the hospital until I've stopped _fucking you about_ , was the direct quote.'

'Is that so.'

'Yep.'

'She'd make a good fucking politician, if I'd let her.'

'She'll be a proper fucking Prime Minister, if she decides to.'

'And, and?'

'I said I'd go.'

Jamie breathes out. 'Good.'

'In the morning. I'm fucking sleeping here tonight. Walked all that way.'

'Good.'

'Aye.'

It's warm under the duvet and they're nearly asleep. 'Did you really nick that cake from M&S?'

Malcolm cracks an eye open and gives the faintest of smirks, and Jamie doesn't quite forgive him, and won't for a long time, but kisses him all the same and begins to think there'll be a proper fucking long time yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Dragunov and theohgodblog for their help talking through some of this, and the rest of you lot for reading and commenting. You're stars.


End file.
